Rights campaigners and politicians Wednesday condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists in exchange for food on India's far-flung Andaman Islands. British newspaper The Observer released the video showing Jarawa tribal women -- some of them naked -- being lured to dance and sing after a bribe was allegedly paid to a policeman to produce them. Under Indian laws designed to protect ancient tribal groups susceptible to outside influence and disease, photographing or coming into contact with the Jarawa is illegal.

A Sentinelese man aims his bow and arrow at an Indian Coast Guard helicopter as it flies over his island on Dec. 28, surveying for tsunami damage. Circumstantial evidence suggests the indigenous tribes of the southern archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar used ancient know-how to save themselves from the catastrophic tsunami.

updated4:38 p.m. ETTue Jan 04 2005 00:00:00 GMT-0800

PORT BLAIR, India - Two days after a tsunami thrashed the island where his ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years, a lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter.

He then took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.

It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, the tribesmen needed to learn nature's sights, sounds and smells to survive.

Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26.

"They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don't possess," said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer who has called on the courts to protect the tribes by preventing their contact with the outside world.

Frozen in the Paleolithic pastThe tribes live the most ancient, nomadic lifestyle known to man, frozen in their Paleolithic past. Many produce fire by rubbing stones, fish and hunt with bow and arrow and live in leaf and straw community huts. And they don't take kindly to intrusions.

Anil Thapliyal, a commander in the Indian coast guard, said he spotted the lone tribesman on the island of Sentinel, a 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) key, on Dec. 28.

"There was a naked Sentinelese man," Thapliyal told The Associated Press. "He came out and shot an arrow at the helicopter."

According to varying estimates, there are only about 400 to 1,000 members alive today from the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompens. Some anthropological DNA studies indicate the generations may have spanned back 70,000 years. They originated in Africa and migrated to India through Indonesia, anthropologists say.

It appears that many tribesman fled the shores well before the waves hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of year.

After the tsunami, local officials spotted 41 Great Andamanese — out of 43 in a 2001 Indian census — who had fled the submerged portion of their Strait Island. They also reported seeing 73 Onges — out of 98 in the census — who fled to highland forests in Dugong Creek on the Little Andaman island, or Hut Bay, a government anthropologist said.

However, the fate of the three other tribes won't be known until officials complete a survey of the remote islands this week, he said. The government reconnaissance mission will also assess how the ecosystem — most crucially, the water sources — has been damaged.

'Islands of the cannibals' Taking surveys of these areas is dangerous work.

The more than 500 islands across a 3,200-square-mile (8,288-square-kilometer) chain in the southern reaches of the Bay of Bengal appear at first glance to be a tropical paradise. But even one of the earliest visitors, Marco Polo, called the atolls "the land of the head hunters." Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus called the Andamans the "islands of the cannibals."

Anthropological Survey of India / AP

Three boys from the Jawara tribe in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago pose in a photo released by the Anthropological Survey of India.

The Sentinelese are fiercely protective of their coral reef-ringed terrain. They used to shoot arrows at government officials when they came ashore and offered gifts of coconuts, fruit and machetes on the beach.

The Jarawas had armed clashes with authorities until the 1990s, killing several police officers.

Samir Acharya, head of the independent Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, said the Jarawas were peaceful until the British, and later the Indians, began encroaching on their territory. Thousands of bow-wielding Jarawas were killed by British bullets in 1859.

Improving relationsOver the past few years, however, relations have improved and some friendly contacts have been made. The government has banned interaction with the tribes, and even taking their pictures is an offense. Many tribe members have visited Port Blair, capital of the Indian-administered territory, and a few Great Andamanese and Onges work in government offices.

Outsiders are forbidden from interacting with the tribesmen because such contact has led in the past to alcoholism and disease among the islanders, and sexual abuse of local women.

"They have often been sexually exploited by influential people — they give the tribal women ... sugar, a gift wrapped in a colored cloth that makes them happy, and that's it," said Roy.

One of the most celebrated stories of a tribal man straddling both worlds is that of En-Mai, a Jarawa teenager brought to Port Blair in 1996 after he broke his leg. Six months later, he looked like any urban kid, in a T-shirt, denim jeans and a reversed baseball cap. But he is back on his island now, having shunned Western ways.

"He took to the ways ... out of a certain novelty," said Acharya. "It's like eating Chinese food on a weekend."

Sounds like the tribes in question were asked and they said thank you very much, leave us alone.

In older days, this kind of situation might be addressed by sending missionaries who understood and accepted the risk. When tribes were persuaded to believe in the same God that outsiders do, then there could be a bridge of understanding. The ironic result today might be that the tribes might want to send their own missionaries back to the godless outsiders. God works in tongue-in-cheek ways.

As a kid in the 1950’s I used to see these adventure magazines on the newstands with names like True, Stag, and Argosy, with covers depicting bare bosomed native babes doing everything from conducting human sacrifice to fighting off the Japs using machine guns.

My Dad didn’t read these but a school chum’s father did and it was worth going to his house to pore over not only these (one mag featured the arch villain `Heinrich Yamamoto’) but the ultimate forbidden fruit - Playboy!

But then, I figure that around 1957 there were literally millions of WWII vets who were still in their thirties, had seen many dangers & exotic places, and were now engrossed in the American dream of work, family, and a house located in the town of Dullsville. They were in need of an outlet for their adventuresome side. Niche market, I guess.

26
posted on 01/11/2012 8:57:03 AM PST
by elcid1970
("Deport all Muslims. Nuke Mecca now. Death to Islam means freedom for all mankind.")

Like moving to high ground after noticing the ocean receding rapidly? As opposed to the civilized reaction of educated and bikini or Bermuda shorts clad modern folks of grabbing one's camera and heading out to the where the surf used to wash? Yep, it's a mystery how people in loin cloths could possibly be so unexpectedly bright.

Northern Europe is 1000 years behind southern Europe and 2000 years behind India? I think you got that backwards!

When both India and China were complex civilizations several thousand years BC, northern Europe was a wasteland peopled with a few, savage, nomadic tribes. It was still this way when the southern European civilizations of Rome and Greece were at their heydays around 3000 to 2000 years ago.

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